Steve Winwood

The Steve Winwood Band’s Greatest Hits Tour will have touched down on three U.S. coasts by July 8th, concluding thereafter with concerts in Germany and the UK. But it’s hard to imagine those other fans showing their love the way Chicago did on Thursday night.

A true English rock legend brought nearly six decades of rock music history to the Samala Showroom at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez California last weekend. Steve Winwood has been a rock star all of his adult life, beginning his musical career as a child prodigy in Birmingham England. The 69-year-old singer-songwriter, master Hammond B3 organist, and smoking blues-rock guitarist joined his first rock band, the Spencer Davis Group, in 1963.

So many years after the disbandment of Grateful Dead that in turn relocated tens of thousands of devoted tour followers to various other acts and bigger life purposes, folks still crave that familiar feeling that kept them on tour. It didn’t only come from the music that Garcia and the gang connected with so many people through, but the sense of community and thriving weirdness that expanded continuously over decades of different intersections.

Last weekend I had the good fortune of attending the Mile High Music Festival in Denver, or more appropriately Commerce City, Colorado. This year was the festival's inaugural year, and as far as I could tell, the affair went off without a hitch. And I love festivals. There is something savory about the vibe put off by people at a festival, something uniquely and honestly human. Even though the weather is hot, even though there are lines for the bathroom, lines for food, lines to buy tee shirts, even though the beer c